Tuesday, December 25, 2007

The final round of Christmas took place at my parents' house. Greg, Kate and Colin had beat us there as they arrived on time, only to have to wait on us to show up 30 minutes later. Colin stopped whatever it was he was doing and the cousins wrapped their arms around each other like an old boyfriend and girlfriend couple. Oh they are so cute!

Very quickly, we jumped right into the gift unwrapping. Here Colin and Elaina are racing to see what they got.How about Lincoln's very own elves trying to simultaneously trying to free up two new toys for him to play with. Elaina was happy to offer her gift-opening services to anyone who wasn't unwrapping fast enough. See: Pop-Pop.

Once things settled down and only the strong remained standing (or sitting), my Mom, Kate, Lincoln and myself gathered together for some girl talk. Most of the talk was about what a blessing little Lincoln has been into our family and how lucky we are to have the families that we share.

I'm realizing that the tradition of Christmas is even more difficult to explain to a two-year old while still trying to capture the magic of the season when everywhere we go, she's getting to open presents. A little over-indulged maybe? No, that's not it.

Since it wouldn't be like Christmas morning without presents under the tree, we held a few back that came especially from Santa.

Lincoln taking in the tastes and smells of Christmas wondering what Santa could have brought for him.No way.... it's a FOOTBALL!My little drummer boy!

The price every little brother has to pay when big sis gets a pretend doctor kit for Christmas. Elaina is "feeding" Lincoln medicine."You mean to tell me that we get to do this again?"

*** AND YES, Elaina did receive her pink gun from Santa. See Lincoln's hand resting atop it? She liked it, but didn't give us an over-the-top reaction that we may have expected since that's all she's talked about wanting for almost 2 months!

Monday, December 24, 2007

Coming from a family who has always celebrated Christmas on Christmas day with opening gifts and the like, I married into not only a great family, but a family whose long standing tradition is to celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve. Following an afternoon of overeating with a house full of relatives, the immediate family began their Christmas unwrapping ceremony later in the evening. Just to share some of the kids' favorite gifts, we first have Lincoln here who totally scored with a new puppy that sings and counts to him. He love, love, loves his new puppy friend. Brace yourselves for a limited, holiday performance of the nutcracker. Guest starring Elaina in the pink tutu. With this kind of "dancing" she really is limited. But over the top cute, so what?

Did you overhear someone say something about a girl who has everything? Elaina? No. Oh wait. A pink scooter? Ooooh, now she is a little closer to having almost everything.

Courtesy of Aunt Cindy and Uncle Ben. Mommy and Daddy had nothing to do with this. Elaina could barely speak as she was so enthralled by her new scooter. God I wish that it was manufactured without a horn!

And finally, Elaina and Lincoln's bathroom is heading in a new direction of decor beginning with monogrammedPBK towels. So spoiled. So good!And yet another day in the life of the professional gift getters. What a great Christmas with family!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Much of this day we spent lazing around my parents house while everyone took naps in front of the fireplace and the freezing wind gusted outside like a tornado. I spent my day packing our truck to head to Eric's mom and dad's house for the second leg of our Christmas tour.

Check out Lincoln getting ready for his visit to Grandma and Grandpa W.'s house. Eric's parents just happen to live approximately 5 minutes away from the mall and my mind was still on overdrive about getting a 2007 Christmas picture of both of my kids with Santa Claus. As you may recall, Elaina wasn't particularly a fan of his when she had seen him last.

So what if it was only 2 days before Christmas? So what if the mall may be jam packed with last minute shoppers? So what if the wind chill outside felt like 30 below zero? And so what if there was a line to Santa's mall throne 27 snot-nosed, crumb covered, whiney kids deep? I wanted to go. See how it wasn't even about the kids anymore? I wanted Elaina to experience Santa. I wanted to prop my kids on some strange impostor-Santa's lap for 3 minutes so I could fork over $20 for two sheets of the same pose. I wanted to capture memories of Lincoln's first Christmas while his sister was evident in the same room. This is Christmas for Glory's Sake!!

And so, I did my homework with Elaina. We discussed what Santa looked like, paying close attention to every color and structure detail. I told her that Santa is the one who brings toys and hands out candy canes. And several times, I made mention that there would be no toys for her if Santa didn't know what she wanted him to bring. Here's how our homework panned out for us:

I realize that Elaina appears to look somewhat hesitant in this picture, but since I was only allowed ONE PICTURE (which was made very clear by Santa's minimum wage "helper's") this is what I got. When we arrived at the mall, I was surprised and pleased to find that it wasn't especially busy. In fact, when we arrived at Santa's throne, he wasn't there, nor did we find a line of any sort. Santa was on a potty break. Elaina got to watch him as he arrived a quick minute later and positioned himself in his seat. I let her down from my arms with some encouraging words and off she went to see Santa on her very own! Yay!! Yay! I got my wish! She did great and without hesitation!

Once I went to help her down (she could have sat there for an hour perhaps) she looked up at Santa and very earnestly said, "Can I have a gun now?" Whooooaaaa, okay, it seems as though in my preparation with her, I apparently didn't make it very clear that Santa would be coming two nights later. And the child still wants her pink gun. Hmmm..... I wonder if the elves make pink guns these days?

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Like I mentioned, we were gearing up for celebrating Christmas with my side of the family this evening. And as expected, not a single lame gift was involved in the "stealing game" (or white elephant) gift exchange that we played.

Here is my cutie cousin Tommy showing off his new panties! Bet he never thought he'd make my blog holding onto his panties! Oh the joy of family. (And being an older cousin.) Here is my knock-out married-in cousin Jaclyn modeling her new brassiere. It was meant to be worn with the gi-normous underpants that she loaned to Tommy. Upon taking her picture I told her that it was the perfect shot for my blog. Wonder if she believed me? Oh well, she's a good sport and we love her!

How about Lincoln's "Santa's Little Helper" outfit? Oohh, I just wanted to eat up his cuteness in one bite. If you look closely, Lincoln is showing off his one and only 1/8 of his first tooth.Amazingly, I don't happen to have too many photos of Elaina. She was too busy darting off from one room of toys to the next and making every cousin her new best friend. She managed to sit down with her little brother long enough to show him how all of this "Christmas" stuff works. My mini composer. Oh Lincoln, I could have propped myself against your piano like Lucy on Linus and listened to you all day. He loved this piano so much unfortunately, it belonged to his cousins. Looks like Mama has some shopping to do!

And for the grand finale.... buh, buh-da-da: The Big Cousins! From left to right, my brother Greg and myself and the remainder are siblings as follows, Andy, Tommy, Bret, Trisha, Catherine and Abby. Abby and Trisha are both expecting and Catherine just delivered beautiful baby Grace in November. The one sibling missing was Susie who is currently living in Arizona. We have older cousins who have older kids and even more family commitments that they weren't able to join us. But this mighty crew of cousins grew up close and we look forward to seeing each other as often as we can.

While I can't hardly complain that I have been so much busier than anyone else, I can just say that this has just got to be the busiest and best time of year.

Let me give a quick rewind of the events leading up to this weekend. Oh yeah, since it seems as though I am approximately a whole week behind. Here's some snippets of how we've been staying busy:

Friday, 12/14: My parents rushed into town to babysit Elaina and Lincoln while Eric and I attended my evening Christmas party for work. It seems as though their night went relatively smoothly as they enjoyed each other's company until we came home and I realized that I never made any mention to grandma and grandpa to feed Elaina dinner. Like any typical grandma and grandpa, they may have shared some cookies or maybe some candy with Elaina, but no dinner. And she was never hungry either. Imagine that.

Saturday, 12/15: Nancy, who babysits the kids, invited her 'big" kids to an afternoon pizza/ bowling party for her 2-4 year old crowd. Uh, can you say, "brave?" We dropped Elaina off and my parents, Lincoln and myself went south of our town to do some shopping. Gradually, we began to her some buzz among the other shoppers that the snow was accumulating like crazy outside. What? When we left, there wasn't even a flurry or sign of snow. We hurried through the mall and headed back north to be on time to pick up Elaina. By this time, the snow had actually accumulated nearly 3 inches, making the roads an icy and dangerous mess. My stomach was reeling as I navigated about 40 mph on the highway and I felt a little sick inside knowing my baby was with someone else in the same weather conditions. I trust Nancy like she's a part of our family, but trust sometimes isn't enough when accidents happen everyday. My heart was sick with worry over all of them. We finally arrived home 30 minutes later than we should have and Nancy called a short 5 minutes later saying that she was going to drop Elaina off at our house. My stress and worry jumped out of my body when I saw 3 sleepy, little, sweeties sleeping safely in the back seat of Nancy's car. Nancy, her 2 grand kids and my baby Elaina had made it home safely after a fantastic, fun day of bowling.

Sunday, 12/16: Happy birthday Eric! Eric spent both Saturday and Sunday in the woods hunting. (Yeah, even in the 3 inches of snow and gusting wind!) Being able to spend time doing what he loves was Eric's best gift. My kids and my parents were keeping me company for the weekend, but by the time Sunday's weather forecast came about, I sent my mom and dad packing even before lunchtime. It wasn't so much the weather in our area that was getting frightfully bad, but near their home nearly 3 hours west. They ended up braving more gusting wind and icy, snowy roads and drove right on through a Level 3 snow emergency, meaning that they could have been arrested for driving on the roads without just cause. I'm grateful that they came and relieved that every last one of us stayed safe on the roadways.

Monday, 12/17: I left work early to finish my Christmas shopping, which I did before attending my very first Tastefully Simple Christmas party at a local steakhouse. What can I really say about sitting around, eating dinner and exchanging lame gifts with 30 strangers and paying $25 for my meal? Oh, maybe that gives you an idea.

Wednesday, 12/19: Eric took Lincoln to see the doctor. He suspected that Lincoln never really got over his croup from last time and once he got pink eye, that triggered respiratory problems which brought the croup back bigger and worse than ever. Lincoln was prescribed an antibiotic and prednisone steroid to kick this out of his system once and for all.

Thursday, 12/20: Eric and I worked like a finely tuned machine as we got the kids fed, bathed and put to bed to have as much time as possible in the evening to wrap up gifts and put effort into our final push to get everything done for Christmas. We would be leaving town to spend Christmas at our families' houses and needed to have everything in place to make that possible. We finished our wrapping, finished our laundry and got plenty of packing done too. This night was a little excessive and bedtime, for me, came around 1:00 a.m. I can't wait for my 4 day Christmas vacation!

Friday, 12/21: I had already warned Eric that I didn't want him to try to rush me or even say the word "hurry" to me tonight as we tried to get ourselves out of the house for the drive to my parents' house. I knew I had plenty to do and I even had a list, but I didn't want to start off my Christmas holiday by rushing through. I don't even know how we were able to pack everything into the truck with still enough room for 2 kids and a dog, but we did it. I actually sent some big Christmas gifts home with my parents last weekend and left some at their house when I was out shopping on black Friday. Thank goodness because there would have been literally, no room for a single item more without busting out the turtle cap to ride atop our truck. NOT. At one point into our drive, Elaina and Lincoln were crying at the same time. Well actually, Lincoln was scer-reaming and Elaina was whining and I was just so thankful that I hadn't already stressed myself out before leaving otherwise this would have totally pushed me over the edge. We managed. We had a safe trip, Lincoln got fed in his carseat in the backseat and Elaina put herself to sleep when she got over her bouts of whine. I'm so happy to be here and ready for the Christmas magic to begin!

That brings me to now. At this moment, (which I know won't last long enough) my brother Greg and Colin have arrived at my parents' house and after some play time and lunch, Eric suggested that Elaina take a nap and Colin could join her. Once the munchkins got cleaned up from lunch, they were both bouncing in the kitchen shouting, "I'm tired!" "I'm tired too!" Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. The two of them laid in bed nicely for a little while until they decided to have a party. Greg joined Colin in bed for a nap. Grandma ended up with Elaina in her bed. Lincoln melted into dreamland on his daddy's shoulder. And grandpa found comfort in a nap with his old friend, Lazy-Boy.

In the next few hours, we are headed to church for my cousin's daughter, Gracie to be baptized. Following church service, we'll be joining in our crazy family Christmas at my aunt and uncle's house with approximately 10 kids under the age of 5 and a plenitude of aunt's and uncles and sisters and brothers. Oh, and this gift exchange with my family isn't lame! A nice reprieve from Monday's sorry attempt.

Since the whole family won't be asleep for long, I'll take this moment to wish everyone a safe, happy and peaceful Christmas holiday. Merry Christmas!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

I know it's been a (long) break for me to get back to my old friend, Blogger here. It seems as though my family can hardly get a break from some ailment or another. Last week we were busy dealing with a round of pink eye for both Elaina and Lincoln. Oh, don't I love that Elaina shares so generously with her brother.

On Tuesday morning, Elaina woke up and her eye looked a little bit bloodshot and red. Not wanting to take any chances, I called the doctor who worked us in for an appointment right away. Without knowledge of what Elaina was being seen for that morning, Dr. Joni came in and immediately confirmed pink eye. In both eyes. Aack!

Wednesday morning rolled around with Lincoln waking up with the tell-tale green gunk lodged in the corners of both eyes. A phone call to our doctor once again resulted in his very own prescription ointment.

The bulk of my evenings last week consisted of washing pillow cases, blankets, toys and clothes. Every night. Everything. While I know that pink eye isn't the end of the world, it really took it's toll on my washing machine and my free time. At this point, we're maintaining treatment for Lincoln's eyes for a few more days and Elaina is back to having her sparkly blues free from any pink irritation or green gunk.

Unfortunately, my lunch hour is nearly up and I'm been made to catch up on my blogging from work. (Crossing my fingers I don't get busted!) It seems as though we have a virus that has been detected on our home computer and until Eric gets a new virus program, I have been banned from using it. Very soon, I hope to back to blogging with pictures and a recap of our weekend with my parents, Elaina's first bowling party, lots of snow and Eric's birthday!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

I am so into the spirit of Christmas so much right now that I could quite possibly burst! I'm not saying that I have all of my shopping done just yet, nor is a single gift wrapped and we haven't even finished hanging our Christmas lights outside. Yet. But that's not what really matters this year. This year I am looking forward to celebrating Christmas magic with my children and am totally loving that we have already received the best gift of all in Lincoln becoming part of our family this year.

Did anyone think that I left you with my last post of the year? Maybe that I linked you my Christmas offering and called it quits because it took me forever to get back to you?

Nah. We just had a weekend. And with a weekend, comes a new ailment to the W. family. But before I get to that, let me tell you about the fun we had with Grandma and Grandpa W. when they came to visit overnight on Friday.

Upon waking up to snow and freezing ice on Friday morning, I was worried that their visit may be cancelled. However, with some persistence and waiting out the worst of the weather, they arrived at our house safe and sound before I had even made it home from work. They kindly treated us to dinner to celebrate my birthday and Eric's upcoming birthday and gave us a night off from cooking and cleaning up. Much of Saturday we spent hanging around the house while Grandma and Elaina found some time to play beauty shop. Grandma had painted Elaina's finger nails and toe nails to match and even gave her a bath. Talk about pampering! Lincoln was just about as good as a baby can be pretty much the whole weekend. Both kids filled their quota of spoiling and full attention while their Grandparents were here. A pretty great visit for all of us!

By the time Sunday rolled around, it was back to plain 'ol mom and dad for entertainment value once again. I had the bright idea of suckering, er, um, inviting my beloved husband with me to finish up some Christmas shopping and enjoy a nice family afternoon out and grab some lunch at our favorite pizza place. He consented with the stipulation that we could go anywhere I wanted to go, as long as we were home, in the door, sitting on the sofa by the time the Steelers game was on. Okay. Trust me when I tell you that Eric volunteering his shopping services is a rare gift indeed. My head began to hurt when I could already see that it just wasn't going to be Elaina's day when she started acting out before 9 a.m. even rolled around. Not that she was necessarily bad, but you can just tell when your kid is in one of those moods. We were totally rolling the dice when we still proceeded with our shopping trip, knowing full well that we would be overlapping Elaina's regular nap time. Gambling, I tell you.

Our day went reasonably well even if it was pouring down rain at one point while we raced in and out of the stores. All Elaina could do is look forward to the next puddle that her parents would forbid her to jump in. Since we hadn't had much success on a whole, we threw in the towel and headed home. Elaina fell asleep in the truck almost immediately. Lincoln was great the entire day and almost made us forget that he was with us. That is, with the exception of heaving a combined Lincoln weight and car seat weight of nearly 30 pounds with every in and out of the stores. He was just good. It helped that we had a nice long sit down, playtime, baby food-eating session planned early into our day.

Just for the record, we were home before the Steelers kicked off. Even if it wasn't televised here.

Fast forward to last night. Eric and I ordered our Christmas cards together. Oh. My. Goodness. Let me just start by saying that we have been trying to capture the most perfect pose of a 2 year-old and 7 month old (together) for nearly a week. Here's just a sampling of what we've gotten to choose from. Of course, I'm sharing the one's that didn't win the picture perfect prize of being selected. Next year has to be easier. Right?

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

365 days ago, the very same thing happened to me. And 365 days before that; same thing.

I celebrated my birthday today.

33 years ago, my parents were celebrating too. 33 years later, they still do. Lucky for me.

This year, I am celebrating my birthday with a husband who loves me, and two of the sweetest kids ever made, whom I have been blessed to call my own. Elaina was so excited about my birthday. She talked in her silly voice saying, "Mommy, it's yer bert-day and I sing happy bert-day to you and we eat bert-day cake ALL GONE!" It really is all about the cake, now isn't it? That's my Girl!

Unfortunately, Eric had to teach a class tonight and didn't get home until after 10:00, so we actually celebrated my birthday yesterday. When I walked through the door, Eric and Elaina jumped out from behind a corner and yelled "Surprise!" and greeted me with hugs and kisses and the most beautiful cake decorated with angels at each corner and Elaina and Lincoln's names and read "Happy Birthday Mommy." So pretty and so tasty! While I was washing my hands and squeezing Lincoln with some hugs, Elaina was sitting at the table saying over and over, "Let's eat it! Mmm! Let's eat it!" Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and Eric caught her biting a corner right off the side. And so we had cake for dinner. Hey don't judge us, we would have saved you a piece. We had our real dinner later on in the evening, but enjoyed our cake appetizer first. I even shared some icing with Lincoln who had never tasted such decadent sweetness and began to flail his arms whenever I poked my frosted finger into his mouth. He was so cute!

Since I already bought my birthday shoes for myself, (times 2) Eric was off the hook for gift giving, but made my special day even more memorable and more enjoyable just by getting the kids involved and being at my side for my last 13 birthdays. Talk about a gift! I am a lucky Mommy indeed!

Over the course of the last week and a half, I made the unfortunate discovery that we have had some unwelcome visitors staying with us. They've made themselves at home in all of our bedrooms, in our closets, in our kitchen and in our cupboards. We have mice. Well, I'd like to think of that just maybe singular, as in a mouse, but I'm really not that naive.

I first discovered the evidence of the invasion last week while Eric was out of town. I came across some poo in the basket that holds Elaina's diapers, on her dresser, in her room. Soon after, I found more evidence in the toy baskets in Lincoln's room. When I was packing up the diaper bag, oh, there was a little dot of poo on the pocket there too. And on some hats in my closet. And on the ledge of the registers. And in my laundry baskets too. I nearly lost touch with myself when I saw a little black dot of poo appear out of nowhere on Elaina's night stand. That little (insert proper vulgar label) was scampering it's dirty little self next to my baby's bed! I won't even begin to get into how much food I've had to throw away due to little gnawed out holes in the sides of the packaging.

So, until this little issue gets rectified, I have been slowly losing my mind. In everything that I do; making dinner, picking up toys and moving things around, I come across a little poo here and a little poo there and it stops me in my tracks to have to deal with the clean up of that particular area. Because of this, my days have seemed endless and blogging has taken a back seat. Regret ably. Trust me, I would rather be talking to all of you MUCH more that I would like to be removing mouse poo from everything that I own. I've had this unending fear that anytime I'm out in a public place, I'll be unzipping my diaper bag or my purse and a mouse will be jumping out. Or worse yet, I'll scream in horror over the discovery of the little dead mouse that is found stinking inside.

Eric has been great about setting traps and leaving out bait and we've already taken one victim into custody. Right into the trashcan. And now we wait. Who knows if there are more, if they'll take the poison to their grave and if we'll see more evidence anytime soon. So, in the meantime, does anyone happen to have a cat that I could borrow for a few days? I promise that I'll feed it well!

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

On Sunday, Eric was headed out of town to go to the Steelers game in the freezing cold rain and the kids and myself were snuggled in tight in our warm house for the day. Just a nice to stay in and enjoy what I have at home, I thought.

Elaina, on the other hand, was behaving well, but testing her limits at times. The sad part is that when I tell her that she needs to "listen to Mommy, do you understand?" She responds with a sad "I unstan, Mommy." And then sometimes she offers me the sassy version, saying, "I lissen to you Mommy."

The sad part is that I realized that while she may understand and she does listen, is she really taking in my words for their meaning? I don't know. We then talked about how she can hear Mommy's voice and that she may understand, but she has to follow Mommy's directions too. Boy, is there ever alot of learning to do when you're 2. We did have a fun day playing on the floor with Lincoln and reading books and watching the Polar Express.

Whoever said parenting was easy? Single moms out there, I bow to you! Keep up the good work!

On Saturday morning, we all peeled ourselves out of bed, got ourselves cleaned up and ready for the day just like any other weekday morning. This morning however, was going to be special. Mommy and Daddy weren't leaving for work. Elaina and Lincoln weren't going to the sitter's house. This morning we were going to have breakfast with the Big Guy Himself, Santa Claus.

All morning we talked to Elaina at great lengths about Santa. She seemed only minimally excited. It's quite possible that I was looking forward to it more than her because someone else was going to be cooking and serving me pancakes, waffles and bacon for breakfast. Oh, and my kids were going to experience some Christmas magic. That too.

The Santa breakfast was at a nearby school which was also hosting a craft show. Much to my dismay, I wasn't smelling piping hot pancakes and smoky, sizzling bacon the minute I opened the door. Instead, donuts. Apparently Santa must prefer donuts? Elaina, on the other hand was thrilled for donuts and chocolate milk. As she was happily munching away, Santa walked into the cafeteria. Elaina immediately stood up in her seat and froze as she grabbed for both of my hands. She didn't move. Instead, we backed off our hype and asked if she would just like to wave to Santa. No go. Eventually, we made our way up to the Big Jolly Man and showed Elaina that Lincoln wasn't afraid to sit on Santa's lap and that Santa was our friend. Still, utter refusal.

The bright side is that Santa still offered Elaina his candy, (which she was not bashful about squandering) and that most of her excitement came from being in the actual school building and seeing a school bus up close. The craft show wasn't even bad. We picked up some cuddly fleece blankets for the kids which have already adorned with snot, crumbs and slobber. Good day, indeed.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Would love to blog because I'm sooo far behind on loads of stories and pictures.

Would love to sleep because I only racked up about 5 hours last night plus about 4 interruptions.

Leaning toward sleep. Sleep is going to win tonight. My eyelids are about to slam shut. My eyeballs are beginning to ache because they have been open too long. And I'm getting that strange pounding in my head because my brain has been turned on for too long. And it's almost midnight again.

Sorry folks. Can we do this another night? Maybe even one day I'll be able to comment on some of my favorite blogs that I've been reading but just haven't managed to comment on. Yeah, that's my plan. Please forgive me!

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Okay, I have to be honest. It's been 4 days since I have posted last and I was actually considering back-dating all of my posts to reflect that I haven't skipped a beat. However, this is only effective for posterity. Not like any of my regular blog reading friends wouldn't notice. Right?

So, since I'm not cheating, I have loads of catching up to do. Let's start first with the whole reason that I haven't been such a great blogger as of late. I've gotten another cold. Just when my immunity was finally reaching a standard of near-health, some goofball I work with (okay, he's actually my friend) came into work sick and feeling miserable. Hmm... contagious, one might assume. All day long, he complained about how his head was stuffed up, about sinus pressure and headache and how he felt as though his head might explode. And then... (this is great) he doesn't stay in his office, oh no!, I find him sitting at my desk and using my computer. WHAAA???!?!? My head nearly exploded just knowing that I was a walking magnet susceptible to any and all germs. That's just me. I booted him immediately, gave him a sick slip, begged him to fill it out and go home and to my horror, found that I was out of disinfecting wipes! Oohh, how I hate when people with loads of sick time come to work when they are sick, and just happen to infect everyone else around them. Any regard for people who do have kids and don't have much sick time? Ugh!

And so, that was my Monday. Wanna know what happened Tuesday? I began felling sinus pressure. And then the headache. And then the sore throat. And then body aches. And then anger. I had caught his dreaded cold. I suffered through Wednesday and by Thursday I had gone home at noon and slept for 3 hours sans kids and then went to bed for the night at 8:00. I beat both kids to bed that night. Eric was completely understanding and didn't ask a single thing of me, which made it easy to slip away for some much needed rest.

So, enough about me. Before I share about my kids, let's just take a minute to check out Christmas at my house.

On Thursday, while I was asleep feeling like my head was going to cave in, Eric had gotten all of the Christmas decorations down and put up the tree with Elaina's help. I wasn't there to actually witness exactly how much help a 2 year-old can offer, but Eric said she did. We spent much of the rest of the week slowly decorating the house and cleaning up and I have to say that I am in love with the sparkle and glow of all things Christmas. Elaina was only mildly impressed and Lincoln doesn't seem to care one way or the other.

Now about those children I have chasing after all week. Lincoln's croup is all gone. Hooray! Between his prescription, sleeping with the vaporizer on and time, he's feeling much better. He's begun to chant the baby "Mum-mum-mumma" song which I love and he's remained pretty consistent with his "Daddadadada" song. Don't you just love new baby noises? With all of this going on in that little boy of mine, just tonight, I noticed a little, teensy, bit of pearl white showing through his bottom gum line. Could it be? Really? A tooth? Holy Moly, he is going to be 7 months old and he's been wanting to eat people food for all of 2 months already! Some teeth will surely help his cause. His first tooth!

Elaina has been good. Thank the Lord that she didn't catch any of our plethora of germs that Lincoln and I have made available to our household. She is completely Miss Independent. She doesn't want help washing her hands, getting in or out of the truck, putting on her pajamas or pretty much anything. She's beginning to live up to all of the great hype of "Terrible Two's." Although I can't hardly say that she's been so much "terrible" but just very strong willed as of late. In fact, I really am going to have to sign off now with the promise that I will relay some exciting events of our day today and how Miss Independent got into a little trouble no less than 5 times in a single day. Since it's almost midnight, I will save my weekend stories for tomorrow night. Sorry to be a tease.